This is the part of the story where My partner in crime starts to take things seriously, which I’m pretty happy with. I really enjoyed having the chance to talk about the design aspects and why Ryukishi wrote the way he did, the tropes of the mystery genre and storytelling that he’s poking at, the way that the style of story changes as we go forward… There’s just so much to unpack and I will never ever get tired of talking about Umineko. In recording I think we have hit multiple hundreds of hours of recording and my goodness I don’t regret a second of it. This has been a huge project and I’m happy to be at a point where I can look back and see where we both began, and where we’ve ended up.

EP7 Spoilers: Also holy crap this nerd gets too much right. He deserves his bar of Old Gold!

Upgrade? Goodness, is deep, Russian, male Jessica not high fidelity enough for you?

In all seriousness though we’ve stuck with the original look and sound the whole way up to the end of Ep7 now, we’re making the full slog this way. There’s a certain charm to the original sprites and backgrounds that @MagusVerborum and I really like. I’m excited to have a go with the patch on a re-read but I need these faces for now

That’s fair, I’m kinda sad y’all didn’t get to see the ps3 version of Episode 5 Tea Party. The PS3 sprites are quite a treat, along with the voice acting. Adding in voice acting has its own patch if you’re interested in VA w/o updated graphics. Ultimately, it’s up to you

Oh goodness no I wouldn’t dare use the voice patch for the playthrough, doing it ourselves is about half the fun! Besides, if people wanted to hear the voices they could always just install it themselves

Also if anyone wants to help make a Jokrono and Magus voice patch I’m available

We won’t miss out either way, I’ll be sure to make note of the Ep5 Tea Party for the inevitable re-read.

The voice acting is Elder-God tier, so I hope you enjoy it when you re-read it . A lot of the scenes get updated by the patch so you might have a greatly enhanced experienced on the second round through, esp. with foreshadowing in hand

I hope you get a chance to check out the playthrough too! A lot of the scenes get updated by the banter so you might have a greatly enhanced experience on the second round through, especially with bad jokes at hand

Glad to see you checking out the playthrough @DoctorUltima! We’re just about to begin Ep8 tomorrow (HYPE) so we’re well past the point of no return on the audio/visual switch side. That said I know of one particular scene I plan on checking out the new sprites for… SUPER SERIOUS EP8 SPOILERS Erika’s pirate hat

The CGs in the PS3 spritework for episode 8 are some of my favorites of all 8 episodes, I don’t really know what the original scenes looked like cause I’ve only played it with the patch on, but I hope that the unpatched cgs are still OK… I’ll respect your guys’ decision to stick with the original sprites and stuff, but man there are some seriously incredible CGs that you’d be missing out on.

the steam version does have CGs with the pachinko art although you need to enable them manually for some reason so most people dont even know about them, they arent really good anyway so thats not much of a loss. However I agree that the voice acting does improve the experience alot especially the more emotional parts and recommend myself to go with at least that upon reread.

Speaking of voice acting let me state some thoughts regarding that in your playthrough:
Your guys attempt at actually voice acting the characters is funny and is certainly part of what makes your videos unique and entertaining, however it makes it a bit difficult to take the more intense scenes seriously especially with voices like jessica. It was funny in the first half of episode 1 but I think it would have been a better idea to not stick with it cause thats just really not how she is supposed to sound like lol.
However some performances are actually pretty damn nice most notably Rudolf, Beatrice and Ronove. Ben really nailed the personalities of these characters, I love it. Im very curious how you guys voiced some of the chiru characters.
(ep6 spoilers)

Im especially excited for Zepar and Furfur, must have been alotta fun voicing those

It’s really a shame that the steam version is weird about the pachinko CGs, I don’t know how more than half of episode 8 would be without cgs, especially the ending. The ending without CGs wouldn’t probably have been remotely the same

Ah yes, the greatest ruse conceived by man! Err wait… by demon. Yes. That’s what I said the first time.

@Vell I’m glad you like those three voices, probably the riskiest one was Bronove, I primarily prepared by listening to his Image Song over and over. I feel like it captures his deadly whimsy quite well. It contains Ep8 spoilers so watch out nerds!

I wonder whether I could do a video or an article outlining why I chose the voices I did, what kind of characters or actors I based them on, that kind of thing. Could be fun outlining the process.

Is that an official song? I though Sugita Tomokazu, who voiced Ronove in both anime and VN (and who is my favorite seiyuu) would sing it, which would be awesome, but this is clearly some other guy. Oh well, the song is still very cool

MagusVerborum:

I wonder whether I could do a video or an article outlining why I chose the voices I did, what kind of characters or actors I based them on, that kind of thing. Could be fun outlining the process.

That would be great, especially in a video discussion format, like a bonus to the Playthrough.

On the topic of actual stuff: once again, I enjoy @Jokrono’s theorizing a lot. I am glad you explained the murders in all three previous episodes with Sayo as a culprit.
Also lol, I totally forgot the opening scene of Ep.4. It was brilliant, I was grinning the whole time. On the other hand, all the Ange scenes are so sad, it’s painful to watch. The music in the last two minutes, man
Great introduction.

Probably not, there are a wide variety of fanmade albums and songs that get me pumped for each recording session. Special shoutouts to “Rokkenjmina in Love” With some great songs for Battler (All about that Oppai), Beatrice (Reviving is a girl’s best friend) and of course the beautiful Seizensetsu, which includes some commentary on Bern’s character. Even if they’re fanmade, they really help inform my playing of the various characters.

Ah, yeah, remember that album. Mainly because of “Reviving” (or “Revive”, rather), it is indeed a great and beautiful song. It gives me strong Higurashi vibes for some reason. (Edit: Funnily enough, I am listening to “Seizensetsu” right now, and I can hear some piano from “You” in it).
If I remember correctly, that Oppai song is made by Beat Mario from doujn circle Cool&Create, who mainly do Touhou arrangements (famous “Help me, ERINNNNNN!!”, for example).
Guess I should give this and other doujin albums more listening